I did not know about David Grossman, maybe because as I understand it, he only writes in Hebrew (this book was written in 2000 and translated into English in 2004). I first heard of him when he was interviewed on TV regarding his son, who was killed recently in Lebanon. This is a beautiful, mature (as opposed to "adult") love story written with such purity that I would be happy to recommend it to my grandchildren. The kind of experience of young true love that some of us remember, where sex was just the icing on the cake; at the end of this book, the cake was not even iced yet. I was very sorry to see it end, but not for that reason. The character development was so well done that I felt I was beginning to have some new frienda that I wanted to know better. David Grossman must know a lot about music. As an intrumentalist and sometimes performer, his descriptions of feeling involved in the music performing process rang a lot of familiar bells. He, of course, knows a lot about writing too. His two main characters, the boy (think Koontz Odd Thomas) and the beautiful 16 year old runaway singing genius girl, were developed like two alternately played musical themes in a symphony, tied together by a third theme, the dog, who loved them both before they met. Grossman must know a lot about dogs too. Indeed he knows a lot about life, and how to express it in print. A lot of surprises too, with hints dropped along the way that something is coming up - the other shoe is going to drop. A great, heart-filling read - I hope to find some more Grossman in the future.